Kristjánsson’s primary goal for this piece is a ‘critique [of] the conceptual/philosophical foundations of positive psychology and its educational implications’ (p. 219), and he does not disappoint his reader. His review of the findings produced by contemporary positive psychologists is impressive, and his reflections deserve serious consideration.
After providing a short history of positive psychology, Kristjánsson offers his first major criticism: that positive psychologists have failed to deliver ‘empirical evidence on a flourishing life’ (p. 86)—the end-goal of all who wish to be virtuous. He reasons that psychologists are ‘reluctant moralists’ who prefer the descriptive rather than the prescriptive. Of course, being prescriptive about something as value-laden as virtues requires positive psychologists to set aside their deeply ingrained logical positivism and adopt an evaluative position. Among social scientists, this is almost heretical.
Nevertheless, a revolt is in order, and Kristjánsson suggests that Hume lead the charge. Through an ontological discourse of Hume’s two laws (i.e., the fact–value distinction and the is–ought gap), he argues that positive psychologists must relinquish their adherence to moral anti-realism in order to embrace Aristotelian moral naturalism. Why is this distinction so important? The anti-realist sees morality as subjective states rather than objective facts about the nature of human beings. By avoiding moral prescriptives, Kristjánsson argues, positive psychologists maintain a relativism that undermines their own theories of moral behaviour. Indeed, by adopting the nomenclature ‘value’ rather than the stronger word ‘virtue’, positive psychologists have avoided an internal moral state in favour of a personal position. It is one thing to say, ‘I value temperance’; it is another thing altogether to say, ‘I want to be temperate’.
Given this sound pitch for moral naturalism, I was surprised to find that Kristjánsson argues next for the adoption of a neo-Aristotelian form of motivational externalism. Although similar to the psychological notion of extrinsic motivation, motivational externalism suggests that an individual desires to do wrong (i.e., his internal moral state is not virtuous), but chooses to do right because of external factors (i.e., social pressure, rules). In Aristotle’s system, this is the continent individual, one obviously not in a state of full virtue driven by an internal moral compass. Given Kristjánsson’s strong Aristotelian bent in other essays, I am not entirely sure why he would take such a position here. Perhaps the closest he comes to answering that question can be found on page 128 where he states that (a) ‘the externalist characterisation is the more parsimonious of the two’; and (b) ‘most agents, at any given time, will occupy a place below the level of the (fully; sic) virtuous’.
Parsimony is a pursuit of logical positivists—that thing Kristjánsson wishes we not become—and ill-suited for something as complicated as virtue. Being, or better yet, becoming virtuous is a difficult and lifelong process. Indeed, achieving full virtue must be a developmental process, and to expect that psychologists study only the continent is really kind of selling us short. Both our theory and practice should be able to account for a richer conceptualization of virtue than the individual driven by social pressures and conventional rules can provide.
After Chapter 5, I expected Kristjánsson to tell me how this new position of motivational externalism would shape the research agenda of positive psychologists. Unfortunately, this is not the case; and I can only hope that if he maintains this line of theoretical reasoning he will tell us what it means in practice. Instead, Kristjánsson provides an excellent evaluation of the current state of applied positive psychology, which is, I might add, very clearly driven by an orientation toward motivational internalism.
The real gem of the entire piece is found in Chapter 9, where Kristjánsson provides his most lucid critique of the implementation of positive psychology (as well as other fields in the discipline), and I hope many of my colleagues will give careful consideration to what he has to say for two reasons.
The first is that Kristjánsson is exactly right about the use of happiness-promoting practices to achieve both personal development and positive educational systems. To shellac most public schools with happiology is short-sighted at best, and may possibly do more harm than good. Students know fake, and the promotion of a pseudo-state of happiness at the expense of a careful consideration of larger issues, more serious and endemic to the sociocultural and economic systems at play here, is very fake. Like Kristjánsson, I hope Seligman’s reconceptualization of happiness into something closer to eudaimonia (i.e., full human flourishing) takes root, and this latest manifestation of American egoism does not follow the decrepit path of self-esteem. I also hope positive psychologists will reconsider the process of finding happiness. For centuries theologians and philosophers have understood the necessity of pain and suffering in the process of achieving eudaimonia; it is high time positive psychologists follow suit.
The second critique can be found on pages 208–210, and should give pause to psychologists who are implementing any sort of character education programme that utilises cognitive-behavioural treatment (CBT). For a very long time I have been uncomfortable with CBT, although I have been loath to articulate my dissent, especially given the current state of research in this area: CBT has become the sine qua non of psychological programming (i.e., certified best practices), and those who would implement other theoretical models have little hope of securing serious funding. Research into alternative therapeutic models has all but disappeared, and psychologists seldom question the theoretical roots of such practices. Until now.
Here, Kristjánsson builds a sound, if brief, argument for the position of CBT in the theoretical camp of Stoicism—an ethical system entirely inconsistent with virtue theory. Whereas Aristotelian virtue theory is based upon rational activity, the cultivation of justified emotions that lead to an invigorating affective response, and the development of a healthy appreciation for sociocultural contexts of every action, the goal of Stoicism is passive tranquillity, a suspension of all but a few necessary emotions, and dispassionate detachment from social situations. Although CBT supporters might dispute this last claim, a careful examination of CBT material will show it to be true. Rarely are ‘clients’ asked to consider the complex affective and social situations of the other; instead they are encouraged to identify their maladaptive cognitions (i.e., thought errors) and find more appropriate (and emotionally detached) cognitive and behavioural solutions. The social and emotional systems are afterthoughts at best.
This last area provides the richest soil and most fertile opportunities for philosophers like Kristjánsson to make valid and lasting contributions to our field. I hope he and others will continue in earnest.
Center for Children and Families, University of Notre Dame, IN, USA
Email: [email protected]
© 2014, A.D. Seroczynski
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057240.2014.969886